A new civil war on the horizon?

The Chicago Cubs vs. the St Louis Cardinals is perhaps the greatest rivalry in all of baseball. It's right up there with the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Soxs, or the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants.

The most significant difference among the rivalries is that the Cards vs. Cubs is, for the most part, a friendly one. Unlike Boston and New York, where you take your life in your own hands, showing up at the ballpark with the colors of the visiting team.

Most Cardinals' fans may not even admit it (I for one can't and I run "The Birdhouse" and the "Weekly Cardinals' Newsletter") but many of them are closet Cubs fans, as long as they are playing someone other than our beloved Redbirds.

You may notice at the ballpark and in my own new hometown of Herrin, there are many mixed marriages throughout the heartland. The husband is the Cardinals fan, the wife is the Cubs fan or vice versa.

Up until now there really hasn't been a problem and all is well. That is up until now.

The Cubs have always been the lovable losers. They were kind of like the Washington Generals and we were the Harlem Globetrotters. You knew we were going to win, it had already been written by the baseball gods.

You could love those Cubbies (how threatening is a team called Cubbies?), because they posed no threat to your desire as a Cardinal or Cardinals' fan, to pursue yet another championship, while the Cubs fall out of contention by the Fourth of July.

But the times they are a changin'.

The Cubs are in first place with their new Manager Dusty Baker. They have Kerry Woods, Mark Prior, Sammy Sosa, Cory Patterson, and some guy named Hop See Joy playing very well. And these guys are serious. No one told them they are suppose to take a fall.

Even with the loss of superstar slugger Sammy Sosa for nine games, the Cubs are still in first place.

The Cubs lost three of four to the Cardinals in St. Louis this past weekend, and if you were reading the newspapers there was a level of trash talk that is unusual in this historic rivalry. Not only among the players and managers, but the fans as well. It was getting a tad little ugly.

I noticed it especially in the men's room, standing next to a Cubs fan. We didn't really want to be on friendly terms, and as bad as we both had to go, we didn't want to share the bathroom.

Driving home I was thinking of all those mixed marriages and the fact that they were going to have to share the bathroom when they got home.

It's going to be a long season.

Be sure to visit Raymond Mileur's The St. Louis Cardinal's Birdhouse web site for the latest information on Cardinal's baseball.